


I've Heard It Three Ways

by sebviathan



Series: if it's all right, then you're all wrong [3]
Category: Psych
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Choking, Episode Tag, M/M, Masturbation, Multi, Mutual Pining, POV Multiple, Sexual Fantasy, s04e12 a very juliet episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-27 07:26:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12076335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sebviathan/pseuds/sebviathan
Summary: Lassiter choking Shawn in the middle of the station, however brief, isn't something that anyone involved justforgets.





	I've Heard It Three Ways

It was barely a  _tap_.

It isn't the first time Shawn has non-seriously hit Lassiter out of annoyance, but it is the first time Lassiter has responded like  _that_. With hands flying outward instinctively, not even to hit him back like Gus often will, but to wrap around his neck.

For a brief moment, it was terrifying. Not that he could ever believe Lassie would really want to hurt him—even  _while_  being choked by him—but the  _shock_  combined with the sudden lack of air...Yeah, just about anyone would have at least a second of fear that they were about to die!

The thing about that, though. Maybe it's only in retrospect, but Shawn knows that Lassiter wasn't squeezing with anything even  _close_  to full strength. He knows it was more or less the same sort of half-hearted antagonizing that his own hit was. But... why  _choking_?

 

" _Jules, we were thinking, um... collectively, that it might be nice if you told us a little more about Scott."_

_"Yeah, especially his darker tendencies, priors, fetishes—"_

 

And then Shawn hit him. No,  _barely tapped_  him—and almost immediately had Lassiter's hands on his throat. Lassiter's strong,  _rough_  hands—

Fuck, okay. He needs to get a hold of himself.

But that was it. The very last word Lassiter said before seemingly  _unthinkingly_  moving to choke him... was 'fetishes.'  _Fetishes_. Now what's the likelihood that  _that's_  a coincidence? Hell, didn't some guy theorize about your true desires slipping out in mistakes like that, some guy named Frog or or Froodle or Freakazoid or, or fucking—

Yeah, a Fucking Slip, that's it.

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but Shawn can't stop thinking about it. For the whole goddamn rest of the day, he can't stop re-living the press of Lassiter's thumb on his trachea, the grip on his jaw and the friction against his adam's apple—he keeps seeing the look on Lassiter's face, and feeling that spark of fear and subsequent heat pooling in his chest and groin, and he just cannot... stop...  _feeling_  it.

Did Lassiter know? Shawn has been sure for years of his attraction being mutual, but did he  _know_? Has he thought about this before, has he wondered—has he somehow discovered what Shawn liked without  _himself_  even being fully conscious of it?

For months now, Shawn has worn a metal chain around his neck, despite not usually being a fan of jewelry. It doesn't add much aesthetically and it occasionally gets caught on his hair, and yet he has put it on almost every morning. He hasn't thought too much about it.

Now, with the slightest bit of thought put in that direction, he realizes that when Lassiter grabs him by the back of his collar, it pulls the chain with it—and it's sturdy, it doesn't break, but merely presses into the hollow of his throat. He's been wearing that fucking thing every day, even through his relationship with Abigail, just for the  _possibility_  of getting to feel it constrict his breathing... and for it to be Lassiter's doing, whether he knew it or not.

The few times Shawn let himself be momentarily aware of that, aside from the guilt, he'd have supposed the latter. He still might, but he knows he occasionally underestimates how good of a detective Lassiter is.

He also didn't think his enjoyment of it was too obvious. But he's been wrong about that sort of thing before.

... _And_  he doesn't have to worry about guilt now that he and Abigail are no longer officially together.

Maybe he should still feel it gnawing anyway, but Shawn is too preoccupied with being eaten up by something else—throughout his talk with Juliet, and even his research into finding Scott with Gus... it stays.

In retrospect, he might have found Scott much earlier if he hadn't given into his impulses and taken a break from the investigation.

But he might have also gotten steadily more and more distracted until he couldn't focus at all. What little Shawn thinks about it, he comes to the conclusion that it's worth it, and mostly that he doesn't care if it's worth it because the moment he slams the door to his apartment shut, there is simply  _no_  going back.

It's immediately a jumble of sounds and memories and very  _distinct_  physical feelings. Door slam. Bedroom that way. Shoes come off—why won't they come off, why did I tie them so tight,  _whatever_. Fall back on bed, zipper down—zipperzipperzipper, got it, shuffle pants down,  _fuck_ —

Shawn had no idea how much pressure and restraint there  _was_  on his dick until it was gone. He gasps not only in relief, but in shock that he could even be so hard—at how  _long_  it has been since he stumbled into his home like this, alone and entirely sober but so  _unbearably_  aroused...

If memory serves, the last time anything close to this happened, it was also Lassie's fault.

" _Lassie_ ," he breathes, and bucks up into his own hand.

He has no shame in this, as surprised as he is with himself. This sort of thing rarely happens on purpose, whether it concerns Lassie or otherwise, and the vast majority of his masturbatory sessions are done in the shower or right before bed or in any case are results of little niggling fantasies rather than actual,  _serious_  sexual frustration... but it isn't bad. Shawn is always up for new things. And his new thing for right now is that... he has actively decided to jack off, and to shamelessly imagine Lassiter choking him as he does so.

Knowing how easily this could all be cut short, and going against his more animal desire to just get this over with, Shawn squeezes the base of his cock. Then, biting his lip, he brings his other hand up to wrap around his own neck.

His cock pulses immediately.  _God._

After a few strokes he mentally pauses it all long enough to scramble to get his shirt and pants off because he can't fucking bear it, he's too  _hot_ already—and shit, that's better, he has a much easier time imagining Lassiter over him, imagining that  _face_  again except more flushed, and closer to his own, and—

And that the hand around his neck isn't Shawn's own but  _his_ , squeezing ever so slightly tighter with the passing minutes, that Lassiter's heat isn't just over him but inside him—and fuck, he doesn't even have a vibrator in but he swears he can feel it—

"Please, Lassie—" he chokes out, and he continues to choke it out despite knowing damn well that Lassiter isn't here, that it's just himself and the bed and the ceiling.

But it helps him imagine more vividly—Lassiter fucking him, choking him, reveling in how much Shawn is begging for it but not wanting to let him come,  _especially_  not wanting to risk choking him hard enough to hurt him, kissing him, swallowing his moans, sucking on his tongue, his jaw, his earlobe, hitting that—oh, fuck, fuck, fuck—

—making him come, and—oh, god, riding it out with him, fuck, fuck,  _Lassie_ , moaning in his ear while he comes, too... Letting his hand go limp, kissing the strip of Shawn's neck where his grip was, telling him he loves him...

Oh, no.

Shawn opens his eyes back to the ceiling and rubs at the base of his neck. He swallows. A moment later, he realizes how much his eyes have watered.

God. He's really got it bad, hasn't he?

 

***

 

Carlton doesn't know  _what_  came over him. What he did—that was some crazy impulse, that's not something he does,  _ever_ , you can't just—

He had no right to put his hands on Spencer like that, and the further the clock ticks away from that moment, the more baffled and angry he becomes with himself. The less real that moment seems. The more thinking back on it feels like watching someone else entirely, because he truly feels that, to some extent, he was possessed with by something or someone else.

It sounds even crazier when he tries to rationalize it like that. Jesus. No—he can't blame some outside entity, he  _knows_  it was still him, it's just  _him_  and he has a fucking problem.

But what it felt like, and what he can't deny... was a switch being flipped. Spencer's hand hit his chest, and his own just flew. In the next second he realized he was living out something he's thought about  _so_  many times before, nevermind that it was in  _public_  and Guster and O'Hara were there and—and... god, it wasn't even consensual.

Whether Spencer or anyone else perceived it as sexual or not doesn't matter. It still was, Carlton isn't going to even  _try_  to deny it, and it was... fucked up. It was wrong. It still  _is_  wrong and he feels like shit—he wants to apologize but he doesn't know  _how_  he could do that without admitting things that he doesn't want Spencer to know...

But what if he already knows? What if Carlton's impulsive action clued him in?

It doesn't take  _him_  very long to realize that his own mention of fetishes is probably what gave life to that deeply hidden impulse, after all. And when's the last time he deduced something based in emotion before Spencer did?

God, that terrifies him. He's suddenly even less capable of so much as  _imagining_  acknowledging this to Spencer's face.

Jesus, his  _face_.

If there's one thing that he could pick out in the moment, or at least understand retrospectively... it was fear. Carlton lets it replay on the backs of his eyelids and he can only bring himself to see  _fear_ —but then disgust, and anger, and the more he re-lives it the more it piles on.

He remembers his hands tightening, the moment Spencer started physically resisting. He had to be  _shoved_ away by his own face, to stop.

Carlton feels like a fucking monster.

Spencer neither brings it up nor avoids him in the following days, however. Any time in shared presence happens as usual—no lack of Spencer's characteristic flirtatiousness, like Carlton expected, or even an air of discomfort coming from anyone but himself.

The one difference he does notice is that, almost every time he has caught Spencer looking in his direction when they weren't already talking... Spencer has seemed to be absent-mindedly rubbing at his neck.

He doesn't usually do that, does he? That's not a normal tick that Carlton has simply failed to notice, in all this time. He's almost certain it's not.

So Spencer is dwelling on it, at least subconsciously.

Now, what Carlton wouldn't give to know exactly what that  _means_. He doesn't even know how  _he_  feels about it, other than that it makes it even harder to get his mind off of it, to stop re-living it, to stop wondering if maybe he had Spencer all wrong and if he in fact liked it—then to stop feeling shitty just for  _wondering_  that...

After a few days, the case ends. Waring is vindicated, and Scott is safe, and Agent Wayne is going to be put away for a long time.

And Spencer very narrowly avoided death, yet again, according to his statement.  _Thanks to Scott swooping in with a metal pole at the last second,_  he wrote. Great. More baggage to add to the Spencer Pile.

He goes home, that night, exhausted out of his mind and with his incident with Spencer somehow fresher in his mind than Wayne's arrest.

Instead of the guilt-riddled version of events, though, what plays in Carlton's memory as he falls into bed is... Spencer's flushed cheeks, both during and after the fact. Spencer's repeated glances toward him—Spencer's hand rubbing his own neck.  _Spencer's neck_... firm, unyielding, yet still in his control, underneath his fingers.

Rationally, he still holds to that he had no right to touch him like that. Otherwise, he feels heat pooling in his chest and groin at the mere thought.

Then in self-discipline, he immediately wraps his arms around a pillow. He is  _not_  going to touch himself tonight, not to thoughts like these. Any other night he wouldn't be entirely self-accepting about his feelings, either, especially since up until very recently Spencer has had a girlfriend and Carlton has been very bitter about it... But he isn't just  _not happy_  about it, now. He refuses. He can't let himself. And he is a grown man who shouldn't have a problem ignoring a late-night erection when he's physically drained of energy, anyway.

Except he does. That is, the thoughts don't leave him—tired as he is, Spencer makes his way through his sleep-deprived brain. (Of course he does. Spencer can do anything.)

The notion of Spencer being so close to having  _his_  brains splattered across that dirt road reaches him quite heavily. The worry for his safety, the anger at both Spencer  _and_  Wayne, the fear that soon enough he'll get himself into a situation that he can't be saved from... the  _relief_  that he's alive, the desire to have the physical evidence of that with him so he can't forget—

No. He doesn't get to have that. What has Carlton done to deserve that?

 _Plenty of things,_  another part of him thinks.  _You've saved his life so many times. You should be holding_ him _in your arms right now, not a stupid pillow_ —

"Fuck," he groans aloud, promptly throwing the pillow off the bed and clutching at the blankets to keep his hands occupied instead.

That's not how it works. Spencer doesn't owe him anything, no matter how much he wants it.

No—he can't think about wanting him. He can't want him tonight. He can't think about having Spencer underneath him and he  _especially_  can't let himself think about having his hands on Spencer's throat again—

His hips roll downward of their own volition, and Carlton suddenly realizes how hard he is. So he clutches the blankets tighter.

He still tries very hard to ignore it all. But those thoughts don't need any encouraging to flood his mind—to form the imagined sensation of Spencer's neck in his grip, the curve of his spine against his chest, his legs spread beneath him and his ass meeting up with Carlton's dick—

" _Sweet fucking_ —" he breathes, his hips jerking down again and giving him some relief.

He should sit up. Lie on his back. Take a cold shower. Anything to keep him away from this, to take his mind off of it, and he'll keep his hands behind his head, he'll avoid letting himself get off at all costs—

He lets himself grind against the bed again.

Didn't he used to have self-control? What happened to that? Did Spencer rip it from him the moment he waltzed into Carlton's life?

 _Or maybe Spencer just transcends self-control,_  comes a voice in the back of his mind. He wouldn't doubt it.  _Most of the stupid things I've done in the past four years had something to do with him._

This isn't stupid, however, so much as... infuriating. And against his own morals. He should not be getting off to something that could have potentially hurt Spencer, no matter how little evidence he has that it actually did. He's still consumed by guilt and anger with himself over this.

And that guilt and anger  _does_  stay, as he continues to give in and let his cock drag across the mattress, harsher and heavier each time. But his arousal stupidly weighs out.

He at least doesn't allow himself the reprieve of his own hands. It isn't enough but it's  _some_  kind of self-punishment—forcing this to last, forcing him to feel the shame of grinding against his own bed like a horny teenager... Nevermind how clearly it allows him to imagine it's  _Spencer_  he's thrusting into, Spencer's throat he's gripping instead of his own blankets, Spencer  _begging_  for it in response to his own moans, wanting him to fuck him harder, to choke him harder—

He finds himself, in his next moment of clarity, grinding down so much faster and harder and more vocally than he began.  _This can't be a punishment anymore,_  he thinks as he finds a groove and sticks to it, tedious as it is—but he lets it happen, he lets himself follow that rhythm and he cannot possibly  _stop_  himself from feeling it build up in his whole body... from groaning  _Shawn_  as he finally comes.

Then, after a few more involuntary jerks of his hips, it all leaves him. And guilt comes rushing back in its place, along with his breath.

"...Oh, Jesus."

Carlton lets go of his sheets and rolls onto his back. His heart is beating in his ears, and arms and ribs and knees are sore, and his hands in particular are stinging from how tightly he was gripping them. And his boxers... really need a wash, now.

So do his sheets. And his whole self, really.

He thinks, maybe... that all might be a decent punishment. At least for tonight.

 

***

 

Buzz is very open with his wife. He knows that honesty is the key to a healthy relationship, and he sees no reason to hide his crushes from her, seeing as they both know nothing will ever come from them—and as  _she_  is similarly open with him.

So Francine is extremely aware of his long-standing admiration for both Shawn and Lassiter, as well as his attraction and occasional... feelings. That is,  _feeling_ -feelings. The kind that, if they were requited and if he wasn't already married, might amount to a relationship of sorts. And she's fine with it! Particularly because she agrees that they're both very attractive, and they very clearly have things for  _each other_... and if either or both of them were ever up for it, a threesome or foursome would absolutely be in order.

Knowing all that, however, Buzz still hesitates to bring up the idea that's been sitting with him since he watched... well. He doesn't know exactly what he watched. But if pressed, he might describe it as Lassiter and Shawn getting kinky in the station.

The crazier thing is, he didn't think they were actually together, yet.

Now, Francine of  _course_  knows about that. They theorize on if and  _when_  the hell those two are going to come out with it all the time, and he's usually enthusiastic about bringing home new evidence... But that's not all it is. He doesn't know how well he'd be able to hide the kind of interest it piqued in him.

Buzz and Francine, for all their openness, have a mostly vanilla sex life. He loves her too much to even pretend to hurt her, and he has never had any desire to see her tied up or even in handcuffs. He barely ever even likes to be in a position where he can't see her face.

This negates  _none_  of those things, but it's still very new to him. So it takes him nearly a week to build up the courage.

He finally gets it while in bed, having the living daylights kissed out of him—and decides that he might as well come out with it before telling her the whole story of what brought this on.

"Hey—Fran?"

She pulls away and frowns at him. "Yeah?"

"I was thinking about, uh... trying something."

"...Like a sexy something?"

He grins.

"Yeah. Um. You think you might be into... choking me?"

**Author's Note:**

> I debated myself a lot on whether or not to include this in the _if it's all right, then you're all wrong_ series, mostly because the rest of the fics in the series have so far been things that could reasonably appear on a rebooted version of the show. And this, due to its heavily sexual nature, could not. It's also probably the angstiest thing that's ever going to exist in this series. But I'm including it anyway because I don't want to put it in the IBTL series and I also don't want it to stand alone.
> 
> Also, I'll admit a big factor in writing this was being able to use that title. B)


End file.
